With the widespread use of zinc-nickel plating processes, the need for effective wastewater treatment is obvious for many users. The main problem with zinc-nickel wastewater is the high concentration of complexing agents used to dissolve nickel salts.
Traditional approaches to wastewater treatment include hypochlorite dosing, UV and peroxide oxidation treatment, or simply concentrating the waste with evaporators to reduce its volume prior to off-site disposal.
Unfortunately, each of these techniques has significant drawbacks, including long process times, heavy sludge formation, high chemical consumption and high energy requirements.
A new approach developed by MacDermid Envio Solutions uses a modular arrangement of compact treatment cells, each designed to gradually remove the complexing agents. Both rinse water and decanted concentrates can be treated in a self-contained system before the effluent stream is returned to the existing chemical wastewater treatment system. Industrial tests have shown that this approach destroys 100% of the complexing agents so that the nickel metal can be completely removed by precipitation. The system is scalable so that users of any size can apply this process and future production expansion is easily possible. The process consumes much less energy compared to UV oxidation and evaporation and minimizes sludge formation.
Interested? Get in touch with us:
